One Direction just beat Obama at Twitter: four-year-old Louis Tomlinson tweet races past Obama’s ‘four more years’ post

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A 2011 tweet by Louis Tomlinson to Harry Styles has sailed past Barack Obama’s post celebrating his re-election to become the second most retweeted post ever.

But both are beaten comfortably by Ellen DeGeneres’s star-studded Oscar selfie.

Tomlinson’s tweet now has 774,321 retweets at the time of writing — many more than Barack Obama’s 757,668. But both are dwarfed by Ellen’s post, which has nearly 3.4 million.

Obama’s tweet went instantly viral when it was first posted in November 2012, bursting through previous records for retweets.

But those records were smashed again by Ellen’s tweet, which also took off as soon as it was posted. That tweet, posted in March 2014, helped it to become “the year of the selfie” according to Twitter.

Tomlinson’s tweet, posted in October 2011, has had a slower growth. But it has since overtaken Obama comfortably — though it shows no sign of catching up with Ellen’s Oscar selfie any time soon.

The race was first noticed by Buzzfeed’s Matt Bellassai.